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Aelion paused in his duties to watch the sun emerge over the eastern horizon. As the sun rose above the White Flats of the Gathian Desert, he went from cold to hot. Poppy red and honey gold washed into each other across the sky. He stood on the docks between two hulking sailwagons aswarm with Esseri tribesmen loading the cargo holds with the last of the salt. Just behind the sailwagon docks, hundreds of colorful tents caught the light of the rising sun. Past the tent city, called Seltaa, lay the salt mines. The mines were a vast, labyrinthine excavation of trenches, sloping pits and tunnels. Spiked with ladders, dotted with tents, and crawling with men and beasts, the mines branched out beyond Seltaa for leagues.
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For easy comparison, here is the previous version:
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Aelion went from cold to hot as the sun rose above the White Flats of the Gathian Desert. Poppy red and honey gold washed into each other. He stood in the middle of a caravan of hulking sailwagons, aswarm with Esseri tribesmen loading the last of the salt and preparing for the annual journey. In the distance to the west, hundreds of colorful tents caught the light of the rising sun. Beyond the tent city of Seltaa lay the salt mines. The mines were a vast, labyrinthine excavation, as though for aeons madmen had dug only the foundations of an entire city. Men sang as they labored, striking picks and stabbing spades to the rhythm.

“Get to work, foundling!” snapped Lamek, elbowing him in the back of the head as he walked by carrying a heavy stoppered clay jar, “or we’ll leave you here for someone else to adopt!”

quote:

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Aelion paused in his duties to watch the sun emerge over the eastern horizon. As the sun rose above the White Flats of the Gathian Desert, he went from cold to hot. [How long is this happening for?]Poppy red[This adjective phrase unsettled me, because I really have no idea what poppy red is. This is, of course, probably an individual ignorance.] and honey gold washed into each other across the sky. He stood on the docks between two hulking sailwagons aswarm with Esseri tribesmen loading the cargo holds with the last of the salt. Just behind the sailwagon docks, hundreds of colorful tents caught the light of the rising sun. Past the tent city, called Seltaa, lay the salt mines. The mines were a vast, labyrinthine excavation of trenches, sloping pits and tunnels. Spiked with ladders, dotted with tents, and crawling with men and beasts, the mines branched out beyond Seltaa for leagues.

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a) The part where you have "called Seltaa" is out of the narrative flow.

b) This entire chunk does not flow very smoothly to me. There is far too much description in the prepostional phrase form. For instance, you use "of" 5 times and "with" 5 times.

c) As an opening, it does not feel too compelling. There is a lot of concentrated description and little else.

d) Bear in mind that all critique is subjective, barring factual statements.

e) Good luck!

I preferred the first sentence of the original version -- the information it conveyed was the best for scene setting; we can leave thoughts of Aelion's duties until the second paragraph with the reprimand.

The description of the sunrise is easier to understand now, and I think it works, although like Phanto I'm not really sure what precise shade of red 'poppy red' is. Poppies come in a very wide variety of colours and shades, a large number of them red of some description.

quote:

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Just behind the sailwagon docks, hundreds of colorful tents caught the light of the rising sun. Past the tent city, called Seltaa, lay the salt mines.

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This seems very repetitive for me, probably because your saying what's behind something and then what's behind that. Join them into a single sentence and it would flow better, I think. E.g. "Behind the sailwagon docks, the colorful tents of the city of Seltaa and the salt mines beyond them caught the light of the rising sun"

Since this world seems the same as ours, the reader can assume that naturally the sun will come from the east.

Thus I believe the opening would benefit with a shorter sentence, something like:

Also, when was the last time you watched a desert sunrise?

It is the hottest inhabited place on earth.

Why? Salt mines.

The Amercians once tried to build a sulphur mine near there, the buildings were all made of salt bricks cut from the ground. It is something like three 300 metres thick.

Anyway here is a link:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/02/0227_040227_TVhot.html

The only storytelling comment I have is when you say poppy red and honey gold washing into each other it seems to confuse the imagery, like a mixed metaphore. Maybe if you described two equally colourful liquids washing into each other it would be a clearer image.

I love the names, (names count for a lot with me), they sound right for the setting.

quote:

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I love the names, (names count for a lot with me), they sound right for the setting.

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Survivor, thanks for raising another interesting point. However, I think that you would agree that some kind of structure for embarking/disembarking, loading/unloading, tallying cargo for duties, etc., etc., needs to exist. When one introduces a blatantly fantastical element, one has to then carefully consider all supporting logistics. Of course there are docks and systems in place for dealing with these vehicles.

I have seen a great many pictures of desert sunrises, but I have not been to any desert, myself (although some parts of Texas seemed like it ).

But again, thank you for the keen critical eye.

Especially for a large open pit salt mine like you describe, there is no reason to have anything like a fixed location for the loading and unloading, particularly with large vehicles that use windpower. Because these vehicles need to have a low center of gravity anyway, there isn't any good reason to use a loading structure that would be mainly useful for loading something high off the ground. It would seem that a dock would mainly serve as an obsticle for these sailwagons. Remember, they aren't on water, so they can't shove off or anything like that. There is simply no plausible reason for a dock, and there are a number of good reasons that you wouldn't want such a thing. It would just get in the way.

The main thing about your account of the sunrise is that everything happens so suddenly. The sun pops up, and suddenly it's warm. Suddenly there are colors in the sky. Suddenly he can see everything.

quote:

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But like I said, the main problem is that this opening gives us no reason to care about the information being presented. It doesn't mean anything.

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Yes, and on that I agree with you. It's in the rewrite cycle.

BTW, thanks for the link. Interesting. That man nearly suffered a very strange and ignoble death, narrowly averted.